Session+5+ISA+14

(see the list of all sessions at http://isarc10internetforum.wikispaces.com/ISA+2014 ) Title: Tuesday, July 15, 2014: 10:30 AM - 12:20 PM, Yokohama, Booth 65 Session Organizer Volker TELLJOHANN IRES Emilia-Romagna Italy **Email:** vtelljohann@gmail.com -- Will not be published Session Organizer and Chair Philippe POCHET European Trade Union Institute Belgium **Email:** ppochet@berkeley.edu -- Will not be published
 * Trade Unions and Participation**

Session Description: This session will explore the impact of the crisis on trade unions and recent developments in the field of worker participation. Contributions analysing the theme at local, national, European and global level are welcome. With regard to the local and national level of analysis we are particularly interested by the impacts of austerity policies and their tendency to undermine trade union and employee rights. In particular, we invite the contributors to address the following questions: •How and to what extent does the crisis impact on the scope of worker participation? •Is institutionalised worker participation undergoing deregulation processes? •Does the crisis contribute to greater divergences between countries with regard to the exercise of participation rights? Furthermore, the session intends to analyse the possibilities of trade unions and worker participation to address the processes of trans-nationalisation of economic activities and in particular restructuring processes at transnational level. As the most developed supranational rights of information and consultation are enabled by EU directives, the session should address their effectiveness vis-à-vis restructuring processes in times of crisis. In this context, we would also like to look what types of transnational strategies trade unions pursue in order to address the consequences of the crisis. Finally, the session also intends to look at new experiences of trade union and employee involvement at global level. Thus, in this session we welcome contributions dealing with the role and the concrete impact of transnational company agreements on industrial relations and worker participation at local level. Format: Oral Is this an invited session?: N Language: English Research Committee: RC10 Participation, Organizational Democracy and Self-Management (host committee)

Abstract id# 38247 Are European Fundamental Rights to Information and Consultation Getting Diluted By National Implementations? Study on Implementation of European Works Councils Directive 2009/38/EC in the Field of Access to Justice
 * Romuald JAGODZIńSKI**, Research, Unit 1: Worker Participation, European Trade Union Institute, Bruxelles, Belgium

Abstract Text: The paper aims at drawing attention to proper transposition of EU directives as a challenge for ensuring effective workers’ rights to information and consultation (I&C). To this end it looks at the example of implementation of the European Works Council (EWC) directives 94/45/EC and 2009/38/EC with a special focus on enforcement provisions. The choice of implementation of EWCs legislation as a ‘lab case’ is relevant in several ways: a) being an EU originating institution requiring implementation into national industrial relations (IR) and legal systems they represent a perfect example of tension between coherence of centrally introduced rights and their national ‘conjugation’; b) the original directive 94/45/EC, substantially modified by recast directive 2009/38/EC and recently transposed provides for an apt up-to-date test-case; c) it addresses loopholes in existing research and has both a political and practical relevance for over 1000 active EWCs and over 17 mil. workers they represent. The paper will provide comparative overview of national transpositions of specific key provisions of directive 2009/38/EC and an analysis of their coherence with the source regulation. Focusing on transposition of enforcement provisions on access to justice and sanctions it will argue that a formalistic ‘copy-paste implementation’ without consideration of the ultimate principle of effectiveness acts as impediment to coherent application of the fundamental right to I&C. To this end it will present jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice and research on the meaning of ‘effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions’. The paper will also argue against the lenient approach supporting the view that differences between national IR justify cases of substantial/excessive, divergences in implementation. By means of reference to EU institutional developments and interventionism in the field of financial market and environmental regulation it will also challenge the view that the European Commission has no competence with regard to setting sanctions. Abstract id# 46272 Participation and Transnational Restructuring Agreements
 * Isabel DA COSTA**, CNRS - IDHE, Cachan, France

Abstract Text: The literature about the “Europeanization” and the “internationalization” of industrial relations has increasingly been dealing in recent years with transnational framework or company agreements and the European Commission database on transnational company agreements currently contains over 200 such texts. Do these new tools of transnational industrial relations at the company level also constitute a new form of regulation? What kind of employee participation do they entail? How have they changed with the crisis? First different levels and actors of transnational industrial relations will be identified, among which multinational firms, Global Union Federations, European Industry Federations, and/or European Works Councils. Then existing transnational forms of regulation will be analyzed with particular attention to restructuring and the crises. This communication is based on ongoing field work about transnational framework agreements with a focus on restructuring. The conclusion will reconsider the notion of “industrial democracy” and outline the evolution of the notion of “participation” as applied to the transnational level. 2012 : Isabel da Costa et Udo Rehfeldt (coordonnateurs), numéro spécial "La participation des salariés au niveau européen : comités d’entreprise européens, société européenne, syndicats européens" de //La Revue de l'IRES// n°71, 2011/4. http://www.ires-fr.org/publications/la-revue-de-lires/493-revue-de-lires-nd71-numero-special-la-participation-des-salaries-au-niveau-europeen-comites-dentreprise-europeens-societe-europeenne-syndicats-europeens-coordonne-par-isabel-da-costa-et-udo-rehfeldt 2012 : da Costa Isabel, Valeria Pulignano, Udo Rehfeldt and Volker Telljohann, “Transnational Negotiations and the Europeanization of Industrial Relations: Potentials and Obstacles” in : //European Journal of Industrial Relations//, June 2012 vol. 18 no. 2, p.123-137. 2011: da Costa Isabel, Rehfeldt Udo, ‘Transnational Restructuring Agreements : General Overview and Specific Evidence from the European Automobile Sector’, in Konstantinos Papadakis. (ed.), Shaping Global Industrial Relations: The Impact of International Framework Agreements .Geneva: International Labour Office/Palgrave Macmillan, collection: Advances in Labour Studies: 143-163. Abstract id# 50075 How Can Trade Unions Improve Quality of Work in Low-Wage Services in Europe?
 * References:**
 * Vassil KIROV**, Centre Pierre Naville, University of Evry, Evry, France

Abstract Text: In 2010 the European Union adopted the Europe 2020 strategy, emphasising the need for increasing labour market participation with more and better jobs as essential elements of Europe’s socioeconomic model. But there is evidence that quality of work in many of the low-waged sectors in Europe is still problematic (Holman 2012) and problematic configurations produce various forms of precariousness, low-wage work, problems of social inclusion and violence at work (Kalleberg 2009). Increasingly, employment at the lower end of the spectrum of skills and wages in Europe is dominated by services that are spatially distributed and often employ vulnerable groups of employees (e.g. contract catering, office cleaning, waste collection, etc.). In these sectors, work is often outsourced from the public sector or other private sector companies and taken over by private sector service providers (large service multinationals or SMEs). The outcomes for employees often are insecure and problematic working conditions and little representation. This results from companies’ cost-cutting strategies, enhanced by changing regulations, the practices of contract awarding and public procurement, the role of the client, conditions that are likely to be exacerbated by austerity measures in the framework of the current crisis, etc. The continuous debate about the specifics of service work has brought significant evidence about the importance of the triangular relations between management, employees and customers (Korczynski 2009). The paper investigates how trade unions address those challenges at EU level and in selected European countries. It is based on the recent research done in the framework of a European comparative project WALQING (www.walqing.eu). The findings presented in the paper are mainly results of the analysis of interviews with social partner representatives in those sectors as well as from company case studies carried out in the examined countries.

Abstract id# 51524 Employee Representation Regimes in Europe: Do They Exist in Practice and Have They Changed in the Crisis?
 * Guy VAN GYES**, Pieter LIAGRE and Stan DE SPIEGELAERE, HIVA, KULeuven, Belgium

Abstract Text: Forms of employee representation have been legally institutionalised in most of the EU countries. These ER regimes have also been recently framed in European directives. However, there exists a great variety of institutional ER structures among the Member States: union-based or works council type; single or dual channel, complementary or exclusionary. Institutional differences exist also in the powers assigned to the ER, in particular whether the ER has not only consultation, but also co-determination rights (see for example DE). A next dimension of diversity is the role these bodies play in collective bargaining. In many systems they play only an additional role in relation to supra-company bargainng, in other countries they have a key role. Recently theoretical classifications have been constructed to cluster these different institutional regimes. We can refer to the general typologies of Visser (2009) and Bryson et al. (2012) of IR-regimes. More specific has been the typology of Altmeyer (2005), which is also applied by Van den Berg et al. (2013). Management style, type of body, assigned powers, bargaining role are used to develop a 5-type model. However, this clustering has never been empirically tested. The paper will in a first step do this empirical test by conducting a cluster analyses on the relevant European Company Survey data of 2010. In a second step and for a country selection, the paper would compare these results with the ECS data from 2005 and investigate the effect of the crisis on the typology. Concretely the paper would tackle the following questions:
 * 1) A confirmatory analysis of the Altmeyer model of ER in Europe: are the country clusters statistically to distinguish?
 * 2) Which type of companies show a different pattern in the country typology?
 * 3) Has there been an evolution in the regime types since the start of the crisis?

Abstract id# 36506 Trade Union Interests In Corporate Governance In Anglo-American Firms - paper transferred to Session 6: The communal idea and participation, Tuesday, July 15, 2014: 03:30 PM - 05:20 PM, Yokohama, Booth 65
 * Catherine CASEY**, School of Management, University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom

Abstract Text: The participation of labour in corporate governance is institutionalized in a small number of countries, especially in European Union states, and variably constrained or systematically precluded everywhere else. Notably, the dominant model of corporate governance in Anglo-American contexts in recent decades exhibits a high prioritization of shareholder interest maximization. Much Anglophone business, economics, corporate and labour law literatures typically assume that workers do not have, or warrant, a voice in governance. Workers’ voice, where acknowledged, is expected to be expressed at the level of workplace decisions and employment relations, or through their shareholding interests. That assumed normative exclusion of workers’ representation from high levels of firm decision-making has powerfully subordinated the valuation of workers’ interests and their political expression. In Anglo-American contexts, finance economics has prevailed in corporate governance decision-making. However, since the financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath the centrality of finance and shareholder sovereignty is now called into new question. Corporate governance is being brought into a political economic discourse and expanded agenda of interest and demand. This paper addresses critical questions in regard to workers’ and trade unions’ interest in, and voice aspirations toward, corporate governance and high-order decision making in Anglophone contexts. The paper is part of a larger comparative empirical study of corporate governance in four Anglophone countries (United Kingdom, United States of America, Australia and New Zealand) conducted in 2012 – 2014. The paper specifically addresses Anglophone trade unions’ interest in corporate governance. It discusses findings that indicate significant and various interests among national trade union bodies. It finds that lack of salience or lack of effectiveness of labour interest expression in corporate governance cannot be assumed as lack of interest in participation across Anglophone countries.
 * Abstract**